The Dark Side is a narrative account of the decisions the U.S. made after September 11, decisions that not only violated the Constitution, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, Jane Mayer relates specific cases, shown in real time against the larger tableau of Washington, looking at the intelligence gained and the price paid. In all cases, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, our country's place in the world, and its sense of itself.

The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones - Confronting a New Age of Threat

From drone warfare in the Middle East to digital spying by the National Security Agency, the US government has harnessed the power of cutting-edge technology to awesome effect. But what happens when ordinary people have the same tools at their fingertips? Advances in cybertechnology, biotechnology, and robotics mean that more people than ever before have access to potentially dangerous technologies that could be used to attack states and private citizens alike.

One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon

Based largely on documents declassified in only the last few years, One Man Against the World paints a devastating portrait of a tortured yet brilliant man who led the country largely according to a deep-seated insecurity and distrust of not only his cabinet and Congress but the American population at large. In riveting, tick-tock prose, Weiner illuminates how the Vietnam War and the Watergate controversy that brought about Nixon's demise were inextricably linked.

500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars

In 500 Days, master chronicler Kurt Eichenwald lays bare the harrowing decisions, deceptions, and delusions of the eighteen months that changed the world forever, as leaders raced to protect their citizens in the wake of 9/11. Eichenwald's gripping, immediate style and true-to-life dialogue puts readers at the heart of these historic events, from the Oval Office to Number 10 Downing Street, from Guantanamo Bay to the depths of CIA headquarters, from the al Qaeda training camps to the torture chambers of Egypt and Syria.

Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins

This essential, pause-resister narrative on the history of drone warfare by the acclaimed author of Rumsfeld explores how this practice emerged, who made it happen, and the real consequences of targeted killing.

Being Nixon: The Fears and Hopes of an American President

What was it really like to be Richard Nixon? Evan Thomas tackles this fascinating question by peeling back the layers of a man driven by a poignant mix of optimism and fear. The result is both insightful history and an astonishingly compelling psychological portrait of an anxious introvert who struggled to be a transformative statesman.

Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State

The top-secret world that the government created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks has become so enormous, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or exactly how many agencies duplicate work being done elsewhere. Award-winning reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin here uncover the enormous size, shape, mission, and consequences of this invisible universe.

Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

Over a 35-year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top-level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly carried a rifle alongside rank-and-file soldiers in combat actions - unusual for a general.

Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation

Many Americans have condemned the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used in the War on Terror as a transgression of human rights. But the United States has done almost nothing to prosecute past abuses or prevent future violations. Tracing this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, historian Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U.S. government.

Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden - from 9-11 to Abbottabad

From the author of the New York Times best-selling Holy War, Inc., this is the definitive account of the decade-long manhunt for the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda expert and CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen paints a multidimensional picture of the hunt for bin Laden over the past decade, including the operation that killed him.

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

The Limits of Power identifies a profound triple crisis facing America: the economy, in remarkable disarray, can no longer be fixed by relying on expansion abroad; the government, transformed by an imperial presidency, is a democracy in form only; U.S. involvement in endless wars, driven by a deep infatuation with military power, has been a catastrophe for the body politic. If the nation is to solve its predicament, it will need the revival of a distinctly American approach.

China Clipper: The Age of the Great Flying Boats

When the China Clipper shattered aviation records on its maiden six-day flight from California to the Orient in 1935, the flying boat became an instant celebrity. This lively history by Robert Gandt traces the development of the great flying boats as both a triumph of technology and a stirring human drama. He examines the political, military, and economic forces that drove its development and explains the aeronautical advances that made the aircraft possible.

God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, this book traces the political intrigue and inner workings of the Catholic Church. Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this audiobook is about the church's accumulation of wealth and its byzantine entanglements with financial markets across the world.

The Forever War

Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, we witness the chain of events that began with the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, continued with the attacks of 9/11, and moved on to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Forever War allows us a visceral understanding of today's battlefields and of the experiences of the people on the ground, warriors and innocents alike. It is a brilliant, fearless work, not just about America's wars after 9/11, but ultimately about the nature of war itself.

Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence

The Weathermen. The Symbionese Liberation Army. The FALN. The Black Liberation Army. The names seem quaint now, when not forgotten altogether. But there was a stretch of time in America, during the 1970s, when bombings by domestic underground groups were a daily occurrence. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government.

Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes

Richard Nixon said he wanted administration to be "the best chronicled in history". But when Alexander Butterfield disclosed the existence of a voice-activated tapind system to a Senate committee in July 1973, Nixon's White House and its recordings quickly became the most infamous in American history. Only 60 hours were actually made public in the 1970s. Many thousands of hours remained secret and Nixon's hands, and he fought fiercely to keep them that way right up to his death.

The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top-secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States.

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War

Ever since 9/11 America has fought an endless war on terror, seeking enemies everywhere and never promising peace. In Pay Any Price, James Risen reveals an extraordinary litany of the hidden costs of that war: from squandered and stolen dollars, to outrageous abuses of power, to wars on normalcy, decency, and truth. In the name of fighting terrorism, our government has done things every bit as shameful as its historic wartime abuses - and until this audiobook, it has worked very hard to cover them up.

John L. Moncrief says:"If you care about our liberties, read this book."

Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA

In 1975, fresh out of law school and working a numbing job at the Treasury Department, John Rizzo took "a total shot in the dark" and sent his résumé to the CIA. In Company Man, Rizzo charts the CIA's evolution from shadowy entity to an organization exposed to new laws, rules, and a seemingly never-ending string of public controversies. Rizzo offers a direct window into the CIA in the years after the 9/11 attacks, when he served as the agency's top lawyer, with oversight of actions that remain the subject of intense debate today.

The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War against alQaeda

On September 12, 2001, FBI Special Agent Ali H. Soufan was handed a secret file. Had he received it months earlier—when it was requested—the attacks on New York and Washington could have been prevented. During his time on the front lines, Soufan helped thwart plots around the world and elicited some of the most important confessions from terrorists in the war against alQaeda—without laying so much as a hand on them.

Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Warfare

Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country's vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan.

The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism - From al Qa'ida to ISIS

The Great War of Our Time offers an unprecedented assessment of the CIA while at the forefront of our nation's war against al-Qa'ida and during the most remarkable period in the history of the agency. Called the "Bob Gates of his generation", Michael Morell is a top CIA officer who saw it all - the only person with President Bush on 9/11/01 and with President Obama on 5/1/11, when Usama Bin Laden was brought to justice.

Bruce says:"A non-political view and insight on the war on terrorism."

The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama

The Endgame is Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor's most ambitious and news-breaking book to date. A peerless work of investigative journalism and historical recreation ranging from 2003 to 2012, it gives us the first comprehensive, inside account of arguably the most widely reported yet least understood war in American history - from the occupation of Iraq to the withdrawal of American troops.

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

America need look no further than its own lauded leaders for a war criminal whose offenses rival those of the most heinous dictators in recent history: Henry Kissinger. Employing evidence based on firsthand testimony, unpublished documents, and new information uncovered by the Freedom of Information Act, and using only what would hold up in international courts of law, The Trial of Henry Kissinger outlines atrocities authorized by the former secretary of state in Indochina, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus, and more.

The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror

Long before the waterboarding controversy exploded in the media, one CIA agent had already gone public. In a groundbreaking 2007 interview with ABC News, John Kiriakou called waterboarding torture - but admitted that it probably worked. This book, at once a confessional, an adventure story, and a chronicle of Kiriakou's life in the CIA, stands as an important, eloquent piece of testimony from a committed American patriot.

Publisher's Summary

In the days following September 11, the most powerful people in the country were panic-stricken. The decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of utter chaos and fear, but the key players, Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser, David Addington, used the crisis to further a long-held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history.

The Dark Side is a riveting narrative account of how the U.S. made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists, decisions that not only violated the Constitution, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda.

In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and best-selling author Jane Mayer relates specific cases, shown in real time against the larger tableau of Washington, looking at the intelligence gained - or not - and the price paid. In all cases, whatever the short-term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, our country's place in the world, and its sense of itself.

The Dark Side chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history, one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.

What the Critics Say

"A powerful, brilliantly researched and deeply unsettling book....extraordinary and invaluable." (The New York Times Book Review)"Like a good suspense novel....potent and disturbing stuff." (San Diego Tribune)"The Dark Side is about how the war on terror became 'a war on American ideals,' and Mayer gives this story all the weight and sorrow it deserves. Many books get tagged with the word 'essential'; hers actually is." (Salon.com)

This was, from start to finish, one of the most engaging audio books I've listened to. Mayer covers the Bush administration from the eve of 9/11 until the end of its tenure with a focus on its manipulation of the law for political ends, especially as it related to executive power and the right to redefine how captured enemy combatants are treated. Far from being a critique of President Bush himself, she underlines his willingness to acquiesce to Cheney and his legal counsel, David Addington, in all matters regarding the treatment of prisoners and the methods by which intelligence was being extracted from them. It is a damning indictment of the unelected bureaucrats who cared more for their own peculiar and idiosyncratic dogmas than for the constitution of the United States, the separation of powers, or the will of the American people.

My only caution is - don't listen to it while you're trying to fall asleep; it will make you so angry, you won't get any.

A very well crafted account of our country's recent decent into torture and the fearmongering politics of the Bush Administration. Although a very long-winded book, the author leaves no detail or accusation unexplained. Mayer clearly did her homework on this subject, as this book should be mandatory reading for every civics class in American schools.

Thank you Jane Mayer for a chilling and detailed account of Cheney, David Addington and John Yoo's reign of terror. This is an important book that tells the story of how we became torturers and how a few courageous republican lawyers -- Jack Goldsmith and James Comey -- spoke truth to power and put in motion the eventual outing of this outrageous criminality. This is not a democrat v. republican book. THis is a book about principled v. unprincipled people -- courage v. cowardice and sanity v. insanity. It is a must read ("listen").

This is a frightening--hair-raising--book that every American should read. Unfortunately, the narration is monotone and sluggish, to my ear. But the content is so compelling that this hardly gets in the way.

Where does The Dark Side rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Well researched and presented in a ballanced and cogent way. Where sources were available to be named these were cited so can be checked and where sources could not be named the appropriate caviat was in place

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The detail and disturbing justification of the use of torture, which as has been correctly pointed up is counterproductive as well as morally indefensible

I got this hoping for a balanced critique of what most agree has been fairly unhealthy eight years for the USA (and the world) after 9/11. 20 minutes into this book its purpose became clear. It is to vindicate and lionize Dick Cheney who is mentioned in nearly every paragraph of the part I heard. Anything evil, such as justifying torture, was ALL the fault of some lawyers (good scapegoats, but who hired them... Dick?) This faux "critique" is nothing of the sort. The theme I gathered (I couldn't get past the first 30 minutes the author's bias became so blatant I just couldn't stand to hear Cheney) made out to be a hero of some sort, Cheney the ultimate long time Washington inside adviser.) But ... hey we had good reasons for still doing evil things to innocent people. The ends always justify the means right?

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